Dungeons and Dragons’ leveling system is too slow for Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has acknowledged a few difficulties in adapting its main source material – the fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons ruleset – to its current project. Certain things in a pen-and-paper RPG just can’t work in a videogame, after all – the most obvious of which is the near-infinite scope that a good DM can give inventive players when devising a solution to a challenge.

Compared with that, you might’ve thought that sorting out a leveling system would be relatively straightforward, but it turns out that Larian’s obligation to work specifically from D&D caused more than a few headaches in this department. We asked Larian founder Swen Vincke how fully his studio is adapting D&D’s character progression, and he said:

“That’s actually been one of the things that we’ve been struggling with, because it’s a very slow leveling process in the books,” he says. As D&D players will know, gaining ten or 12 levels on the tabletop is a journey that could last weeks, but for a videogame, it’s “not a lot.”